


autoclave

by hotdogharvester



Series: "every breath you take" is not a love song [6]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Captivity, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, F/M, Hallucinations, Isolation, Malnutrition, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Neglect, Psychological Torture, Rape Aftermath, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sensory Deprivation, Solitary Confinement, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Victim Blaming, Vomiting, auditory hallucinations, edging into Cotard's Delusion territory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:09:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23778931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdogharvester/pseuds/hotdogharvester
Summary: Rock bottom isn't always a dark place. Sometimes it's a lonely room where the lights never go out.
Relationships: Tarn/Reader
Series: "every breath you take" is not a love song [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1276337
Comments: 21
Kudos: 184





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> what doesn't kill you only prolongs the inevitable

The first complete thought that crosses your mind when you wake up in a strange bed is that you must be dead.

That impression doesn’t last long, though. Your ribs hurt too much. The fractured one seems to crack anew every time you draw a breath. Even though you take it as slowly as you can, rolling onto your less injured side makes your vision blur with agony. Surely you would no longer feel bodily pain if you were dead. Grunting and hissing, you sit up to take further stock of the situation.

This room is worse than the last one. This cell, rather. It’s about half as big and smells of chlorine. Gray metal walls. Gray metal floor. An ominous drain in one corner. Ceiling higher than an office building. No furniture at all. The bed you’re on isn’t much of a bed, it turns out. It’s just a thin mattress lying on the floor. Its surface crinkles a little when you move: vinyl stretched over cheap stuffing. No sheets or pillow.

Somewhere distant the ship’s engines are whirring. So, you’re still on board…ah. Now you remember what happened. What you did to land yourself in a nearly featureless room. You tried to escape and now you’re being punished with even more austere lodgings than before. Great. It’s obvious, though you’re certain that won’t stop the bastard from explaining it all in excruciating detail whenever he deigns to see you next.

“That was…a bad idea. That was a really bad idea. But…there’s no ‘but,’ is there?”

It even hurts to speak. No one replies, because no one else is there. The engines keep whirring, inexorable.

Maybe he tranquilized you again but you don’t have that same hangover. You must have just fainted in his subspace and then he dropped you here…wherever “here” is. Someone will come to harass you eventually. You might as well savor the solitude while it lasts.

•  • •

Tarn hasn’t come to see you. No one has. You’re not concerned. If anything this is more a blessing than a punishment.

A few hours after you first woke a pre-mixed meal packet of nutrient sludge in an edible pouch comes oozing down the far wall like a colossal slug. There might be an opening way up high where someone pushes out the so-called food but you can’t see it from where you are. The sludge packet does not taste substantially worse than the dry variety.

Newly fortified, you search every inch of the cell you can reach and find nothing noteworthy. The mattress isn’t hiding anything and the walls are totally smooth. Standing over the drain in the corner causes a spigot to fold seamlessly out of the wall and spray you with cold water, soaking your drab clothing in an instant. The same thing happens when you squat. If you’re stuck here long enough to need to relieve yourself then that’s going to be a problem. There’s only the one drain, after all. At least the grate is removable.

Tarn will come to get you eventually. He’s reliable like that.

•  • •

It’s been at least two days and he hasn’t shown up yet.

You’re not concerned, but you are _extremely_ bored. The solitude stopped being such a consolation a sleep cycle ago. Examining the walls inch by inch has revealed no hidden seams or cleverly concealed doorways. There are no hollow panels; everywhere you knock seems solid and dull. You’ve started talking to yourself just to hear something other than the ship’s engines. Not constantly, and not nonsensically, but enough that you’re starting to wonder at what point you should worry for your mental stability.

It has not escaped you that you should already be worried about your mind. It’s not as if you aren’t, it’s just that this is different. The only other thing breaking up the nothing is the irregular and incapacitating pain from your fractured rib.

At long, long last, something interrupts your isolation.

A voice calls out, “Hello there!”

You snap to attention. Distance can’t obscure the ugly smirk on Kaon’s pale gray face, protruding from an opening in the wall way up above.

“What do you want?”

Your voice is scratchy and strange when you reply. It still hurts to speak above a whisper.

“Oh, I’m just making sure you’re still functional. As a favor to Tarn. He would do it himself but...well.”

You stare without replying. Eventually Kaon takes the hint and continues.

“He doesn’t really want to see you right now.”

_Good_ , you think.

“He’s actually away on a mission. There’s no telling when he might be back. It could be a few days, or it could be months. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re probably happy to be getting some _personal space_. Am I right?”

He’s not wrong, but you know there are no real blessings to be had here.

“Does it really matter to you how I feel?”

His awful grin stretches wider.

“He said you might say that. No, it does not matter to me. Your feelings only matter to Tarn, and he’s not here. He did leave me in charge of you, however. Helex and Tesarus are on probation, Vos can’t understand a thing you say, and Nickel’s been against this from the start. That leaves me as your caretaker for as long as he’s away.”

“Is that why I’m in this room?”

He nods.

“Yes. I prefer to think of it as a vivarium, of a kind. I just don’t think you have enough appreciation for the lengths my commander went to in order to make you comfortable.”

You take as deep a breath as you can stand before responding. The pain flares like thermite, but the abject terror you felt when Tarn cracked the bone has faded.

“If I speak plainly, will you hurt me?”

His grin falters.

“No.”

“He made you promise to leave me alone, didn’t he?”

Kaon bites his lip.

“In a manner of speaking. Yes. I swore I wouldn’t harm you physically.”

“That’s good to know. So I can say whatever I want to you and you just have to take it, right?”

His smile is still there but it’s a bit strained.

“I’d reconsider your tone, if I were you. Now that you’re at my mercy I would encourage you to think less about resistance and more about _harm reduction_.”

“If I were you I’d reconsider being a gutless little freak whose only talent is following orders, but it’s probably a bit late for that.”

If he had optics they’d be blazing right about now.

You continue, “I’m not scared of your threats. If you were going to do anything to me, you would have already done it. And you’re not going to do anything to me because Tarn won’t let you. So unless you have some important information to relay I’m going to politely suggest that you leave me alone.”

Kaon screws up his face and taps his fingers sharply against the wall before speaking again.

“I think you overestimate my interest in you, _bloodbag_.”

You think about the potential consequences of provoking him further and decide that nothing matters, actually. Nothing matters!

“I really don’t think I do, _Sparky_.”

Kaon cocks his head at that.

“Don’t be so obtuse, you little pest. I know you’re not that stupid.”

“Oh, why don’t you just fuck off, you–”

“Shut up. Let me _politely suggest_ that you _shut up_. Have you already forgotten how we found you? I watched you for a very long time. I’d say I know you just about as well as Tarn does. Maybe even a little better, since I don’t have the sentimental attachment that so obscures his judgment. Of course I’ve self-serviced thinking about putting you in your place, but that’s…how do I say this, ultimately not relevant.

“The truth is that I think Tarn should have killed you the second time you said ‘no’ to him. It’s what I would have done. Granted, the first ‘no,’ wouldn’t have stopped me, but Tarn cares about your feelings, and that makes you a distraction. He’s unbalanced because of your pointless intractability. When he’s unbalanced, the team is unbalanced, and when the _team_ is unbalanced, the cause is threatened.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you? I hope I’m making myself clear. My loyalty to Tarn is not stronger than my loyalty to Decepticonism.”

Your stomach turns. His expression is as cold as a statue’s.

“You guessed right that I swore I wouldn’t hurt you. And I won’t. But I’m not going to waste any time coddling you either. As it is, you get to live. You get to be left alone, unmolested, with no one watching or listening in. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To be left alone?”

“Wait,” you say, “wait, hold on–”

“Maybe you’ll be extremely lucky and he’ll come back soon. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll encourage him to take his time getting back. I do hope you appreciate getting more privacy. Maybe you’ll take this as an opportunity to rethink the extremely privileged position you’ve occupied thus far.”

Kaon withdraws his head before you can reply. You’re suddenly very aware of the space you occupy and the absolute blankness of your surroundings.

“Wait. Wait!”

He looks back down when you call out, but raising your voice is so painful you can’t speak another word. Even though he has no eyes to see you can feel him looking at you, really looking at you. He’s not smiling now. There’s a trace of sorrow in his expression. It makes you shiver.

After a long pause, Kaon speaks once more.

“All Tarn wants is to love you. And you won’t let him. I think that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

This time he doesn’t linger. When he pulls back behind the wall the opening disappears as seamlessly as if it had never been there.

The ship’s engines hum. If you stay very still, you can feel your heart beating all throughout your body, pulsing in predictable and routine rhythms. You close your eyes and say a little prayer, but not to any human god. You breathe in and out.


	2. Chapter 2

In a very different room, a video display divided into quadrants shows off four different angles of the tiny figure slumped in the austere chamber. Tarn stares at the monitor while Kaon double checks the settings on the hidden cameras. 

“How long are you planning to let this go on?” Kaon asks.

His commander’s face betrays no strong emotion of any kind.

“As long as it takes,” Tarn replies.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what doesn't kill you makes you wish you were dead

Basic training for working with Cybertronians and traveling into space covered a lot of potentially harmful situations that could arise. Temporary isolation as a result of equipment malfunction or catastrophe was one of them. Punitive solitary confinement—at the hands of extremists who aren’t even supposed to still be active—was  _ not _ . 

In your professional life you’ve never allowed yourself the luxury of panicking, but now seems like the perfect time to indulge. It would be so easy to think just a little too hard about the situation you’re in and fall screaming to the floor: easier still if your fractured rib allowed for any sudden movements.

Being isolated—as a moody teenager, as a displaced survivor, as the sole human among aliens, as a person with a shameful secret—is terrible, to be sure, but being _completely alone_ is something beyond. Only a few sleep cycles have passed in this new place and you’re already getting antsy. You want to believe that you would never beg to be set free but you also know from what little reading you’ve done that solitary confinement destroys people. Period.

You’re already a different person than you were before Tarn strolled into your apartment. If this new captivity plays out as Kaon threatened then there might be nothing human left of you at the end of it.

However…however…this could still be just a bluff. You still have yourself. You still have your mind. You cannot let yourself get swept away. There’s no reason to believe Kaon was telling the truth. As petty and violent as Tarn is, the odds of him leaving you at the unsupervised mercy of another person, even one he professes to trust, aren’t great. He wouldn’t just let someone else do this to you. They’re probably both watching you from a hidden camera right now, waiting for you to unhitch completely from reality and start creeping around the room speaking in tongues.

But if they’re not…well. If they’re not, then they’re not, and there’s nothing you can do about it. This is horrible but it’s where you are. This is the world now. There’s no question of how you’re going to deal with it or any strategy you might take to keep yourself whole. This is happening, and you are powerless to do anything about it.

You might as well just wait a little while. See what happens.

• •  •

Another sleep cycle has passed and no one else has come to see you. That doesn’t mean anything in itself.

Tarn waited a long time before escalating his assaults. You can wait too.

Exercise is out of the question but you stay occupied by reciting everything you know about human history in chronological order, making frequent detours for religious conflicts and devastating plagues. There’s a lot to go through, and a lot that you don’t know. You know that New Jersey’s state bird is the goldfinch but not the name if its capital city. There are more countries on Earth than you can remember and it makes you sad not to be able to name all of them. Shouldn’t you at least know their names?

You have to whisper to keep your rib from hurting. The skin over the fracture is bruised red and tender.

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

“Sleep cycle” isn’t the most accurate term at this point. Very often you jerk awake, convinced that you’re plummeting from a great height. Falling asleep at all when the lights never go off is an honest to god ordeal. You try wrapping your shirt around your eyes for a little darkness but being blindfolded again is too much for your fragile nerves. That’s not even getting into the wretched mattress.

So, despite your best efforts, your circadian rhythms are warping. You’re never too hot or too cold but somehow you keep waking up drenched in sweat, still shaking from smothering dreams, and never well rested. The fatigue is so complete it’s almost impossible to even feel afraid of what’s happening to you.

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

You’ve recited the lyrics to every song you’ve ever heard. You still won’t sing. Not now. Not here. When you can’t stand the sound of your own voice you sit under the spigot and let the cold water numb your head. It always cuts off after about an hour. Or maybe less. Telling time is tricky.

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

You can finally speak loudly without aggravating your injury too much.

“Ok. Ok. Ok. Come on. Come ON. TARN. TARN. TAAAARN. I know you’re listening. You’re always listening. You wouldn’t just leave me here. You think you know me? Well, I know you too, don’t I? You don’t just want to watch. You wouldn’t do this. You wouldn’t do this to me. Not like this. Cut this out. I’m sick of it.”

• •  •

Seven or eight or ten total sleep cycles have passed. Or maybe only six. The near constant and silent crying is really starting to wear on you. It isn’t even sad crying. You feel like you’re waiting for the novocaine to kick in before getting a tooth pulled but the enveloping twilight never comes.

• •  •

Suddenly it’s going to dawn on you.

• •  •

“You got me. Ok? Ok. Ok. You got me. You GOT me. Hear that? Listen to me. LISTEN TO ME. You got me. Are you listening to me? You want to hear this. I give up. Ok? OK? Get me out of here. Get me OUT of here. I’ll do what you want. Ok? OK?? I swear to you. I swear on the Cause. I can’t do anything if you don’t get me the fuck out of here.”

• •  •

The difference between a vivarium and an autoclave is actually quite small.

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

You’ve given nicknames to your hands and feet. They all have distinct personalities. Incredible, the things you learn in a crucible. Of course, you don’t say anything about that out loud. No one else has earned that knowledge.

If you eat the nutrient sludge very slowly, you can feel it breaking down bit by bit by bit by bit in your stomach, which is its own private world.

Every part of your body is its own whole, and your “self” is really only an amalgamation of disparate entities. Your mind is separate from your body is separate from your soul. Sometimes you can feel them overlapping, chafing against each other, and it’s hellish.

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

You’re running out of things to talk about. Talking about your life is all that’s left, and you can’t bear it. You can’t bear it. It’s important to know that there was a time and place before this but god, at what cost?

• •  •

“What do you want from me? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you FUCKING WANT?”

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

The ceiling is there and not there. If you squint just right you can feel it draped over your face like a bridal veil. Position your arms at the correct angles for long enough and it feels like your upper body is floating inside a water tower, cold and distant, while pins and needles make a white mess of your feet.

Your body gets to feel the way the rest of you feels. It’s nice to be in sync, even if only for a little while.

• •  •

This isn’t even so bad most of the time. It really isn’t. Really! Really. The noise from just behind your head, however, has got to stop. One day after waking from a gray nightmare back into gray consciousness you heard it: a clicking rustle, or a rustling click, like a deck of cards shuffled and slapped together. It must be something in the ship’s engines but the sound follows you all around the room, whether you’re on the mattress or under the spigot or slumped against the walls, and you can hear it through spoken words and thoughts alike. Just whenever you think the sound has gone, there it is, just out of reach, ready to trip you up.

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

• •  •

The walls are unreadable. The floor is unreadable. If you scrunch up the mattress, sometimes you can distort it into something like a face. You can’t quite make it talk but you can pretend.

• •  •

Two more sleep cycles have passed.

• •  •

Lacking normal food to chew, your jaw muscles have weakened. When you bite down on your wrist, just for a change of pace, it only stings the tiniest bit. You can’t even draw blood. That’s when you decide to ball up what remains of your clothes and chew on them. It will be embarrassing if when if  _ if _ you get out of here and you can’t even chew food. Drool-soaked fraying fabric tastes just as gray as the nutrient glop.

• •  •

Waiting for your nails to grow out so you can gnaw them short again is intolerable. You bite them to the quick, and shorter still, until you taste blood.

• •  •

You are still yourself. You are still yourself. You are still yourself. The mysterious thing behind you rustles and clicks and rustles and clicks and in the artificial endless light from above you are  _ yourself _ .

• •  •

“Tarn, please come back. I didn’t mean what I said. I’m sorry. Please, please take me out of here. Please. I don’t understand. I’ll sing, ok? I’ll sing. I’ll be with you just please please please come get me. Please. Do you want me to beg? I’m begging you.”

• •  •

No one is coming.

• •  •

Being awake isn’t really the same thing as being alive. Sometimes it’s hard to remember to move.

• •  •

The ships engines hum and hum and hum and hum. They speak a secret language that you can only struggle to understand.

• •  •

You’re not getting out of this. You were never getting out of this. You were never going to go home. Home was gone before you even left. Remember? It’s hard to remember, because it’s hard to think about anything, and because it hurts to think about it. Home is gone, was gone, will always be gone.

• •  •

Meal packets collect like salted slugs against the wall.

• •  •

Rustle,  _ click _ . Rustle,  _ click _ . Rustle,  _ click _ . Rustle,  _ click _ . Minute after minute after minute after minute after minute after minute after minute.

• •  •

There must be some meaning hidden in the noise. A message. A truth? It can’t just be nothing. It has to mean something.

• •  •

There are no sharp edges on the drain cover or the spigot. Even if there were…you’re not strong. Your entire life has been a display of weakness of one kind or another. You might not do it right. And time is different now. It might take too long.

• •  •

You’re not going to die here. You’re already dead. The person known as Jane Doe is no longer alive. You try to pinpoint when it was that she died but thinking in any kind of methodical way over that constant  _ rustlickrustlickrustlickrustlickrustlickrustlick _ is exhausting. You were alive at one point. You know this because of the pain. But the pain in your cracked rib is gone now. You can’t even feel it when you scream. You remember it but it’s gone. Even  _ that _ is gone. And what’s left? You are awake but not alive and not a person.

• •  •

You know what the sound means. You’ve always known. But you won’t say. You won’t put that in words. The thought can stay a thought. Your thoughts are breaking down. Dead and unfeeling as you are you can still  _ think _ , and when your thoughts run out you’ll finally be gone, and the sound with you.

• •  •

Even dead and unfeeling, however, Jane Doe’s body still notices when a new and crushing silence falls upon the room. The engines of the ship have gone quiet. The background humming is gone, and she can hear the maddening inner workings of her carcass again: heartbeat and breath, so intrusive in the emptiness. She can’t stand it. She can’t stand it, and so drowns out the cacophony with a whine that becomes a wail that becomes a bestial, pitiful screech.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired not by quarantine (surprise) but by my own experiences with dissociation during intense depressive episodes and by Enfilade's [These Shackles You Forged](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7031566/chapters/15999883)
> 
> if you want to have a really bad time look up some nonfiction accounts of life in solitary confinement


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> something being inevitable doesn't really make it easier to bear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tired of this body  
> tired of this body  
> tired of this [body](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJpDUoUAZI)

All along she’s been struggling not to believe that she deserves this.

In moments of relative lucidity—which would be like fever dreams to anyone not in her precise circumstances—Jane finds herself the vessel for a painful and incandescent rage. This rage is directionless at times but it often finds a target in what came before that fateful first meeting at her apartment. She thinks about everything that led him to her and thus everything that led her to this empty, devouring place.

Start anywhere in the past and none of it looks good.

Take that first night, for instance. No one with an active Decepticon affiliation, let alone the commander of the Decepticon Justice Division, should have been able to get anywhere near an office so deep in Autobot territory. So much had to go so horribly, flagrantly wrong for that to even be possible.

It was supposed to be safe. The war was over. Even before Megatron formally defected the war was _over_. She had been assured that it was safe for her to work with Autobots: to leave her lonely home for a lonelier place among the stars. Grunt work disguised as diplomacy still mattered. It was for a good cause. Wasn’t it?

At the time she hadn’t thought twice about the Big Conversation assignment. She wasn’t supposed to be the one _thinking twice_ about such things. It was all but stated she’d gotten that task simply because no one else wanted to do it. She’d gotten the entire job in the first place because it was dull clerical shit that shouldn’t have mattered to anyone. The Decepticons were defeated. The war was over.

Well, she knows better than that now. All her dead coworkers know better now, too.

Maybe the Autobots simply hadn’t known the DJD was still active. Maybe they hadn’t cared. She couldn’t have expected them to anticipate a lust-fueled terrorist attack. But then…why had she been told it was _safe_? If there was one Decepticon extremist group still functioning, then maybe there were more. Did they not know? How could they have not known?

How good could the cause be when the people fighting for it were so incompetent?

How could they have let this happen to her?

How could they have let this _happen_ to her?

There are other human agents working in Autobot-controlled systems. Are? Or _were_? Do they only exist in the past tense now? Are they all dead too?

How could anyone trust the Autobots to do good when they couldn’t even protect a single human after the war was fucking _over_?

Really, wasn’t it their fault the Decepticon movement had made it to Earth in the first place? If they had really been dedicated to _doing the right thing_ then wouldn’t they have tried just a little harder to stop the uprising from bleeding off planet and into the wider universe? Even if they couldn’t stop the violence from leaving Cybertron there were many, many, many worlds between there and Earth: billions upon billions of people who the Autobots couldn’t save. Silent, empty galaxies of the dead. 

Freedom hardly matters when all the people who have a right to it are dead.

Jane thinks of this, and thinks of it, and thinks of it, turning it over and over in her mind like one of those hidden picture illusions until all the meaning is leeched from it, and it sits in her mind like a corpse at the bottom of a reservoir.

When she can no longer stand thinking about the Autobots she thinks about Earth.

She thinks about the relatives who didn’t stop her from leaving. She thinks about the friends (that might be too strong a word, in retrospect) who didn’t stop her from leaving. She thinks about the ex who never really wanted her there in the first place.

She can’t even call him her ex-boyfriend because he was insistent on not using labels for the entirety of their four-year “relationship.” It never got better than that very first night: two in the morning after the _Pippin_ cast party. He’d lent her his jacket on the walk back to her dorm and then pressed her against a brick wall. He was the lead tenor; she was a chorus girl. Always a chorus girl. She had no illusions about her lack of talent but she loved to sing. Jane thinks she’ll never love singing again.

The bastard wouldn’t even hold her hand if his friends were around. She was always too afraid of losing him to ever ask for more. It’s incredible how much that still bothers her even here, even now. What kind of deep-seated mental derangement would let her look a monster in the eye and say “no” but also prevent her from ever having a straightforward conversation with an insignificant human partner?

Would Tarn still be so obsessed with her—with whatever false image he’s concocted of this fragile alien—if he knew how pathetic she was amongst her own kind?

God, there’s something wrong with her. She had suspected as much for years; even during childhood she felt apart from everyone else. Discovering her unnatural sexual appetites as an adult seemed only to confirm those vague suspicions. But that isn’t all, is it? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is, very simply and truly, something terribly wrong with the person who calls herself Jane Doe. She knows this. She no longer has anything to distract herself from it.

She is the spiritual equivalent of a teratoma: a pathetic, poisonous growth tainting what would be a perfectly fine body if anyone else were piloting it.

Maybe all her loved ones were right not to stop her. Maybe that man she used to share a bed with was right to only love her in secret, and then only tentatively. Damn him for letting her imagine she might be able to have normal life. Damn him for letting her pretend. They saw something repulsive in her, and were they wrong?

She hates them all with such passion it almost feels like joy.

  * •  •



Jane is screaming to keep the rustling clicks at bay when the far wall of her prison splits from top to bottom and folds back into itself. She tilts her head back to see what’s happening. Tears are dribbling upside down from her eyes but she still gets a clear view of what’s waiting for her just beyond the threshold.

Tarn stares down at her.

She falls silent with a gasp, and touches one hand to her ribs even though they’ve long since healed.

They both stare.

Tarn steps into the room.

Jane, unthinking, rolls onto all fours, limbs splayed like a prey animal. Tarn halts. Something is going to happen. A wave is about to break. She has no thoughts that can be put into words but if she did she might say that this moment smells like ozone.

Hand shaking, he unlatches his mask and lets it drop. Jane flinches, not at the clatter when it hits the floor, but at his expression.

Tarn’s handsome features are twisted in anguish, his optics glowing not with hunger but with compassion.

He lowers himself to the floor and slowly extends his right hand, beckoning.

He doesn’t lunge for her or snatch her up or even gently nudge her forward.

He kneels. He waits.

Jane’s eyes overflow.

She creeps forward on her hands and knees, sobbing, shuddering, and he makes no move to touch her until she places her own shaking hand in the center of his outstretched palm. Even then he only reaches with his other hand to brush the tears from her face.

They stay like that for a long time before he enfolds her in his arms and she shuts her eyes, pressing her whole body against his unforgiving frame. The texture of the warm living metal is a blessing of contrast and it’s far, far too much. She shakes and wails and lets the storm roll through her until she passes once more into unconsciousness.

  * •  •



Another strange room. Another strange bed. The part of Jane Doe still capable of thought is tired of waking up in unfamiliar places.

This room has a window. Snow’s falling outside, big feathery clumps swirling down to an unseen ground. The sky is gray and bright, tinted ever so slightly purple. The color is mesmerizing. The very concept of color is mesmerizing. Imagine! Something that isn’t wholly gray.

The air in here is chilly but the light is gentle to her eyes. Even the walls look softer than the ones she knew for so long. There’s a clean blanket tucked around her naked form and a big plastic bottle of water on the bedside table.

It’s quiet. There are no humming engines and no clicks or rustles of any kind.

Tarn is seated on the floor under the window, looking at her.

Jane catches his eye and thinks, _Why not?_

She knows she went mad in there, that there are huge vital pieces of herself that are never coming back, but why not?

Why _not_ say yes? Why not just give him what he wants? All that’s waiting for her if she keeps saying no is an unmarked grave or an empty room. The idea of opening herself up is no longer so disgusting.

This is probably exactly what he planned. But of course, understanding torture doesn’t actually make it any less effective. Knowing the mechanisms of pain won’t stop the nerves from firing. Time in the hand, etc.

It’s humiliating. It’s not fair. Tough shit. Nothing has ever been fair.

Tarn rises to his feet and closes the distance between the wall and the bed in three slow strides before lowering himself back to the floor.

She imagines asking him, “Am I still alive?”, but the words don’t make it to her mouth.

Tarn looks over at the door for a long moment before removing his mask again.

That’s just not fair. Him showing his face isn’t fair. Being able to match a voice to a face after all this time is sickening. But again, tough shit.

He parts his lips.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for doing this to you.”

She thinks, _I said no and you threatened to kill me. I said no and you broke my rib. No one’s ever felt so strongly about me. If you keep drawing this out I’ll be sick._

“I know that I hurt you. And I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had done everything differently.”

He looks her dead in the eye.

“I could never ask you to forgive me.”

Well, at least there’s that. 

“When you said you would rather die than be with me I couldn’t handle it. I lost control.”

This is a lie, she knows. That wasn’t what she said. She remembers that there was more to it than that, but then she also remembers a number of things in the empty room that could not have been real, so the truth doesn’t matter as much as it once did.

“Your life is so fleeting compared to mine. The idea that it would be cut short for any reason sent me into a fury.”

She wonders if he knows that she’s given up: that this maudlin speech is just an unnecessary performance.

Tarn leans over, casting a shadow.

“I should have made it clearer that no one is coming for you now that you’re here. No one was ever going to come for you. You’re lucky it was me that found you. It could have been some extremist group. It could have been Black Bloc Consortia thugs. It could even have been other humans. But it wasn’t. It was me, and now no one else can hurt you.”

Jane tilts her head slightly. Her hair is clumped against the pillow.

“I can’t keep my team safe, Little Spark. They wouldn’t want me to. I can only keep _you_ safe, if you’ll let me.”

His expression is pained. A stronger person might laugh at this. A stronger person wouldn’t have ended up here.

“But…I have been completely and unforgivably cruel to you. I want to give you something most people don’t get: a choice.”

_Oh, stop._

“I could put you in a shuttle and send you back to Earth. If you really want that. It would be dangerous, but it wouldn’t be impossible.”

_No._

“You could live out the rest of your days among your own kind, as ignored and unremarkable as before. If I sent you away, however, it wouldn’t be for very long. Inside of ten years the Decepticon army will be organized enough to launch another attack on your solar system. Inside of fifteen years the human race will be no more.

“You’ve experienced first hand the fundamental incompetence of the Autobots. The failure of our previous invasion was a fluke. We will not fail again. When we land on your planet I will not be able to make an exception for you or anyone else.”

A headache is flickering to life in Jane’s temples. Tears are welling in her eyes, and her stomach is cramping. It’s been a long time since anything but clumps of old fabric have passed her lips. She is so tired of being alone in this body.

“I’ll leave you alone for a while to think about your options.”

No.

Jane lurches upright so fast she almost falls out of bed, spots dancing in her field of vision. Tarn hasn’t even moved yet.

“No,” she whispers.

Tarn remains seated.

“No,” she repeats.

He waits.

“Don’t leave.”

Tears are spilling down her face again, again, Jesus Christ AGAIN.

“Please.”

For what it’s worth, he stays.

  * •  •



Even in the safety of the base, Messatine’s permanent winter would devastate her if Tarn were not so attentive to her needs. While he was away, (and he really was away for a while; that part was true) he invested in a robust variety of hygiene products and other sundries. Heavy, quilted garments keep her warm whenever she isn’t in Tarn’s quarters, though it’s rare that she gets to go anywhere else. He keeps the room warm for her.

Jane has a little space of her own next to Tarn’s berth, like a cubby set into the wall. If he needed to he could just reach in and pull her out. It isn’t private, but it’s hers. She can draw a curtain around the bed to shut out the light when she needs to sleep. There’s a set of shelves for her books. A utilitarian and discreetly shielded bathroom stands in the back. The water from the shower is warm. There’s liquid soap for her hair and a generic moisturizer for her skin.

It must have cost a lot of money and time to set this all up. Tarn never mentions the expense. She doesn’t ask about it, just accepts that it’s hers. No one has ever cared so much. It turns her stomach if she thinks about it for too long.

He doesn’t bother to blindfold her anymore. The first time he has to leave her alone to attend to business elsewhere, she draws the bed curtains and curls up in the dark, howling, until she faints. It might be the most mortifying experience of her life but it’s difficult to judge such things nowadays. The scale of mortification is so warped as to be meaningless. After that incident he doesn’t leave without making sure she has a datapad loaded with distractions and a communicator that can only call him.

The first time she calls him, her heart leaps when she hears his voice on the other end. After they’ve spoken she dry heaves so hard it makes her jaw ache.

She spends most of her waking hours with him. Sometimes they sit in companionable silence while he reviews paperwork or drafts messages. He often has music playing. They even talk about their respective likes and dislikes. Now that she’s given up it’s all so much less fraught than it used to be. She tells him about boy bands and community theater. He tells her about the great Cybertronian composers of long ago and the concerts he snuck into before the war.

Tarn only touches her to move her in and out of her room. He doesn’t sit her on his lap or run his fingers through her hair or leave livid bites on her neck and shoulders. At first she’s confused, and then afraid, but it doesn’t take long for her to realize he’s waiting for her to ask him. All he used to do was ask and now he isn’t asking for anything.

She doesn’t know how to say it. She’s already so completely exposed. He knows she’s given up, so what is there to even say? Nothing with words. Still. She has to say something. She has to take a deep breath and look down into that abyss at long last.

She’s going to fall. He’ll catch her when she does, whether she wants him to or not.

  * •  •



“I think maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible,” she mumbles.

Tarn glances up from his tablet.

“What wouldn’t?”

“Being with you.”

He looks at her.

“You _are_ with me.”

“You know what I mean.”

Nothing in her tone matches the tears flooding from her eyes. God, she’s so sick of crying for no good reason.

“I do,” he concedes.

Jane shuts her eyes and sighs, perhaps in relief. Perhaps not. He brushes his thumb over the back of her hand. Jane turns up her palm and curls her fingers around his; she can only hold two at once. They stay like that, side by side, for a long time.

  * •  •



There are things that can survive an autoclave, but they aren’t human.

  * •  •



The worst part, if any of this can even have a worst part, is that the sex isn’t even that bad when it finally happens. It isn’t  _ good _ but it could really be a lot worse. Having something inside her that isn’t  _ her _ is honestly a welcome change of pace. She can’t make it feel like anything but a violation but at least it’s different. It doesn’t even feel like a fall from grace. But then again, maybe this is how it should be.

It wasn’t even _that bad_. She didn’t even cry.

In the aftermath he allows her to retreat to the bathroom for a little while. She stares into the dull little mirror over the sink, looking for some change she knows she won’t find. It’s the same body it’s always been with the same sad inhabitant. Same dark circles under the same bloodshot eyes. The reflection inspires no emotion in her but a vague and justified disgust.

When she feels the transfluid trickling down her leg it isn’t surprising. It isn’t a shock. It makes sense that this would happen. It was going to happen eventually. Gravity still exists, of course. She looks down, observes the liquid, and thinks, _That’s normal, given the circumstances._

Then she thinks, in the most detached manner possible, _I’m about to be sick._

Jane fists her sweaty hair in one hand behind her head, kneels down, and vomits into the toilet that Tarn was so gracious to provide her with. When it’s over she spits, pinches herself hard, and stands back up.

She chose this. There was no choice. There was only this choice.

Tarn calls out to ask if she’s all right; she takes two deep breaths before replying in the affirmative. She was just a little dizzy. She was dehydrated. She’s fine. Everything’s fine. She rinses her mouth out without looking at her reflection and goes to rejoin him on the berth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for now, folks. It isn't the end of the story, but it's the end right now. A million thanks to everyone who's read it or left a comment. The very idea that people enjoy what I post here—especially this strange, repulsive stuff—warms my heart. If you have a Tarn in your life I hope you can get away from them as soon as possible.

**Author's Note:**

> "[An autoclave](https://www.duralinesystems.com/How-Do-Autoclaves-Work-s/581.htm) is a pressure chamber that is used to sterilize equipment and supplies. When these items are placed inside the autoclave they are exposed to high temperature steam (usually around 132 degrees Celsius or 270 degrees Fahrenheit) for about twenty minutes. These times vary based on the amount and physical size of the equipment that needs sterilized. This hot steam will kill germs that simple detergent or boiling water could not."


End file.
